Gary Moloney finds the remake of the classic show pales in comparison to its predecessor.
Remakes are quickly becoming more and more prevalent in the television world; the results of these re-interpretations have been quite mixed. While some shows such as V can be on par with or actually superior to the original, others such as Charlie’s Angels have disastrous attempts at piggy-backing on the original and have ended quicker than Gary Coleman’s post-Different Strokes career. Having weighed the pro and cons equally at the appropriate junctures and in the fullness of time, I’m afraid to say that Gold’s new series of Yes, Prime Minister falls into the latter category.At first glance, the show should work. The original minds behind the series, Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay have returned along with the cast from the West End stage show which received glowing reviews and had three sell-out seasons which made it one of the most successful West End productions in a decade. It even has a surprisingly enjoyable intro sequence based on the more modern day style of political caricatures. So what happened? Where did it all go wrong?The biggest issue arises with the script itself. While a comedy can occasionally get away with bad acting (and sometimes even thrive on it), without a solid script behind it the show will be doomed to fail and no more so is this true than in the realm of political satire. When the basis of the entire show is to poke fun at the absurd truths of political life, a strong script is required not only to make us laugh, but convince us that this is not just political satire, but rather political reality as well. It’s not any one part of the script that lets the new Yes, Prime Minister, but rather a number of things.There is a worryingly overreliance on recycled material from past series. This wouldn’t be so bad if it was presented in new ways which developed on what had come before, but in many instances the jokes are taken verbatim from the original series and were executed much better back then. There is only so many times you can watch Hacker ask whether Humphrey’s long winded answers mean “yes” or “no” before it becomes stale, especially when it lacks the charm the original actors brought to it. The new material that we do get is very much both hit and miss. On the one hand, Humphrey’s explanation of the EU Institutions, particularly the differences between the European Council and the Council of Europe was quite clever, but on the other, the PM’s impromptu welcome speech to a foreign diplomat amounted to nothing more than five minutes of distinctly unfunny dribble which was as painful and awkward for the audience to hear as it was for the characters themselves.It could be argued that one shouldn’t compare the new series to the old series so strictly, but when we are asked to believe that these are the same characters we know and love, it becomes impossible not to do so. While one accept such divergences from the established norms of the series in the stage-show given its nature as a once off, you can’t get away with it over a six episode series and when it is targeted at fans of the original as it is. Perhaps it would have been better to make the new series a true successor to the old, with new civil servants and a new minister. Perhaps they could have included guest appearances from Derek Fowlds, the sole surviving member of the original trio, as a retired Bernard teaching the new civil servants who to deal with a minister much in the same way that Humphrey went to the former Cabinet Secretary for advice in the original series. However, the problem with the original Yes, Prime Minister is that for the most part, it is still as relevant today as it was 30 years ago and doesn’t really warrant an update. While it may work for those who haven’t seen the original series, Gold’s attempt at remaking a classic was indeed a courageous decision.
